TL hopes to crack down on loud exhausts

October 26, 2013

TUPPER LAKE - Driving a vehicle with a modified exhaust might soon garner a ticket in the village here.

At Tuesday night's village board meeting, Tupper Lake police Chief Eric Proulx said the department is preparing a new subsection to the peace and good order law that would put a decibel limit on how loud a vehicle's exhaust can be. Proulx said the department is looking at three quotes for decibel meters.

"It's hard to do without a decibel reader, but there are laws on the books that make it illegal to put a device on a motor vehicle which increases the noise level of that vehicle from how it came from the factory," Mayor Paul Maroun said. "What we're zeroing in on, you've all heard it, is that trucks go down every street in Tupper with these things that increase the volume of the exhaust."

Even though loud exhaust systems sparked the high-decibel crackdown, Proulx said the new subsection would apply to anything loud. The current language of the village's peace and good order law states, "It shall be unlawful for any person to make, or cause or permit to be made, any unreasonable noise."

"We'll be putting a local law out for discussion soon, and we'll have to have a public hearing on it to try to eliminate this," Maroun said. "It doesn't do anything to affect the overall operation of the vehicle, it just does a lot to create a lot of noise."